Day Five - Cortona and Gubbio

Beautiful weather today - clear blue skies, 28 degrees and for the first time no thunder, lightning or torrential down pours.

We visited Cortona again today, as it's one of our favourite towns. It sits on top of the hill and we climbed all the way to the top of the hill through the narrow unbelievably steep streets. I can imagine in times past that horses and donkeys would pull carts up and down the hills. Nowadays, everything from scooters (Europe's favourite transport), Fiat Pandas, Electrician vans and even scaffolding trucks scoot up and down the streets. I've posted a picture of one of the cars parked up against a wall on one of the incredibly steep streets. With some of the cars, you'd expect them to slide off the hill whenever it rained.

Anyway, the views of the valley from the top of the town were fantastic, but my legs are paying the price now.

I was making an effort to follow the speed limits when we left Cortona, much to the consternation of the locals, who were all over me like a cheap suit. One gentleman in a white Fiat Panda was very keen to get past, but there was nowhere for me to pull over, so he zipped passed on a short straight, only to go round the corner and be confronted by a temporary red light for road works, with three cars in the queue. This didn't deter my man in the white panda. He could see that there was nobody coming through the other way, so without pausing he moved over to the wrong side of the road and drove through against the red light. It was quite funny seeing the people in the queue all stick there heads out the window to see what the man in the White panda thought he was doing.

Next stop was Gubbio. The drive to Gubbio was through a very beautiful forest over a winding mountain road with beautiful lookouts and castles. Gubbio is more at the bottom of the hill, and is a beautifully restored town - I've put some photos down the side of the blog. We had a fabulous lunch in Gubbio. I had sliced pork with pears, cheese, truffles and balsamic oil for an entree (fantastic) and an asparagus risotto for the main. Anne had roast cheese with puff pasty and truffles for entree and Strogoli pasta with shrimps and fresh tomatoes. Lunch here is generally eaten with a half bottle of wine, which is very civilised and sensible and leaves one in perfect condition for the drive home.

Because its our last day in the villa, we were back early for a relax by the pool and to spend time with Hilary and Debs before we head on our separate ways tomorrow morning.